What's New

Late last month, Congress and President Obama extended federal unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, previously set to expire at the end of this month, through the end of February 2012. While the renewal of federal UI is a tremendous relief to the approximately 1.1 million Californians who depend on these benefits to survive while looking for work, the bill does not go far enough to address unemployed workers’ needs.

Currently, California provides UI benefits for 26 weeks, and the federal extension provides up to an additional 73 weeks of benefits, for a total maximum of 99 weeks, through four separate extension tiers and an additional extension because of the state’s high unemployment rate (known as Fed-ED). This renewal of federal UI benefits for the next 10 months comes with a price: it gradually reduces the total number of weeks unemployed Californians will be able to receive UI benefits in the coming year. The bill provides a potential maximum of 99 benefit weeks through August 2012 and 93 benefit weeks through December 2012 (assuming California’s unemployment rate remains high and Californians will continue to be able to file Fed-ED extensions). The last effective date that Californians can file an initial extension or move to the next tier is December 23, 2012; the Fed-ED extension, available after all tiers have been exhausted, has a filing deadline of December 30, 2012.

What does all this mean? Well, assuming all eligibility requirements are met, anyone in California who has been collecting UI since approximately June 2011 could still collect all 99 weeks of benefits. But, starting this week, a Californian who begins a UI claim now could only collect 26 weeks of benefits and an additional 20 weeks under the first tier of the federal extension. Then it gets even worse: a Californian who starts a UI claim after July will not be able to collect more than 26 weeks of benefits because all of the extensions will have expired by then.

Although the gradual reduction of weeks will avoid the shock of an abrupt cut, unemployed workers are more likely than before to exhaust their UI benefits before securing new employment due to the abbreviated timeline. The shortened supply of benefits is especially worrisome because in recent years the median number of weeks workers are unemployed has doubled, with a large number of workers spending more than a year searching for work. Approximately half of Californians collecting UI are using the federal extensions. Going forward, those federal extensions will gradually become unavailable to people who become unemployed, adding more people to the 625,000 unemployed workers in California who have already run out of all available benefits, having exhausted the 99 week maximum. Unemployed workers are ultimately left to hope that the economic recovery is sustained, job growth continues, and they are able to find a job before their benefits run out. The clock is ticking.

UI benefits, available to workers who were separated from their last jobs through no fault of their own, remain as critical now as they have ever been. At Legal Aid Society–Employment Law Center, we are working to ensure that all workers can access UI benefits when they need them. Roughly half of callers to our nightly Workers’ Rights Clinics have questions about their rights to UI benefits; our Claims Project is representing more clients at UI appeal hearings than ever before. Many think of UI benefits as a safety net, but for most of our clients, they are a life line. UI benefits—ranging between $40 and $450 a week, with an average weekly benefit amount of $292 in California—are the difference between being able to pay rent and becoming homeless; being able to put food on the table and going hungry, being able to make ends meet and crossing the poverty threshold.

For answers to how the new federal extension may affect your claim for UI benefits, call our Workers’ Rights Clinic at 866.864.8208.

Today, in Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland, the Supreme Court held that state workers cannot sue for money damages for violations of the “self-care” provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Enacted in 1993, the FMLA allows eligible workers to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave (1) to care for their own serious health condition, (2) to care for a seriously ill family member, or (3) to bond with a new child.

The Court previously held that Congress validly allowed states to be sued for violations of the “family care” provision of the FMLA, since that provision was based on evidence that family medical leave policies discriminated based on sex. In today’s decision, the Court ruled that Congress lacked the power to abrogate states’ immunity.

David Lopez, General Counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), visited the offices of Legal Aid on Wednesday March 21, 2012. Lopez, the first field staff attorney to be appointed as the EEOC’s General Counsel, spent an hour and a half with Legal Aid staff, government representatives and community advocates outlining his mandate and program for the Commission and answering questions about how the Commission can be supportive to those working against discrimination in the workplace. Joining Lopez for his presentation was Regional Attorney William Tamayo from the San Francisco EEOC office.

The U.S. Department of Labor is currently considering proposed regulations that will improve working conditions for domestic workers across the United States. These regulations would place more workers who provide home care to persons with disabilities, including aging person, under the protections of the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA). However, the mechanisms for providing in-home care to disabled persons in the community are complex and underfunded. This raises the concern that these regulations will trigger unintended consequences unless the Administration takes additional steps.

Legal Aid Society–Employment Law Center has submitted comments endorsing these proposed regulations. We have also requested one clarification and set forth additional steps required to achieve fair and just results for both the domestic worker community and the disability community.

We are pleased to announce that Tamika L. Butler and Rachael Langston were selected by the editors of The Recorder as two among 50 Lawyers on the Fast Track. The list recognized attorneys who have practiced 10 years or less and who have demonstrated “substantial accomplishments as leaders, lawyers and community members.”

On average, women earn less than men and therefore they must work one day longer a week to earn the same pay. That’s why Equal Pay Day is recognized yearly; it is to demonstrate concretely that it takes one day more per week for the average earnings of women to catch up to those earned by men in a similar job

Today, women earn 81.2 cents for every dollar men earn. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women who were full-time workers had median weekly earnings of $669, nearly 20% less than men’s median weekly earnings (based on 2010 data). Broken down by race, the gap is even larger. Latina women earn $508 per week as compared to $850 per week for White men. Similarly, African-American women earn $592 per week and Asian women earn $773 per week. While Equal Pay Day is designed to highlight wage discrimination involving women, Latino and African-American men also earn less than White men. Latino men earn $560 a week as compared to $850 per week for White men. African-American men earn $633 per week.

Women are already suffering economically in these difficult economic times, and their challenges are even greater because of the harms caused by pay discrimination.

On Saturday April 14, 2012, Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center attorneys Elizabeth Kristen and Tamika Butler co-presented a workshop at the 2012 American Association of University Women (AAUW) California Convention in Santa Clara, California.

In the workshop, “Fair Play for Girls in Sports-Leveling the Playing Field for K-12 Athletes,” Elizabeth and Tamika focused on the crucial role that Title IX and high school sports programs serve as a ladder out of poverty for girls from low income families. They also discussed the many benefits that state law AB 2404 and with it California Parks and Recreation programs offer as a gateway to broader horizons for young girls living in low income communities.

The case raises constitutional claims of gay and lesbian state workers who, together with their same-sex spouses or registered domestic partners, are denied equal access to California’s Long-Term Care Program. The lawsuit challenges the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and a provision of the Internal Revenue Code that excludes gay and lesbian state employees from purchasing state-sponsored long term care benefits for their spouses or domestic partners in violation of the equal protection and due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center is pleased to invite applications for sponsorship of a Skadden Fellow for the two-year period beginning in September 2013. The two-year fellowship offers a recent law school graduate the opportunity to obtain training in litigation as well as many other aspects of public interest practice. The Skadden Fellowship Foundation awards approximately 25 fellowships per year to graduating law students and outgoing judicial clerks. Skadden Fellows develop projects that provide legal services to persons who are poor, elderly, and/or homeless, persons with disabilities, and others who are deprived of human or civil rights.

Legal Aid seeks to sponsor a candidate to work within our Wage and Hour Enforcement Litigation Program- WageHELP. Applicants are encouraged to propose and discuss project ideas in this program area which works to ensure that all workers benefit from the protections of wage and hour law.